So, we're looking at chapter 9, take one or two others along. Really, it's taking Matthew 18, 15 through 20, and trying to apply it here. And so, imagine you're involved in a conflict, you've really even gone through those seven A's of confession, and you've really worked hard, and you're just not gaining any traction. And you're not getting anywhere. You've done the things in the Peacemaker up to this point. So now, what do you do next? Well, once again, what you always want to come back to is you keep wanting to ask yourself, am I sure this is a big enough deal and harmful enough to either the person, my relationship with them or Christ Church, that I need to pursue it? Or as this goes on, I'm going, wow, the time invested in this, this really doesn't measure with you know, the level of problem here, and I should probably just overlook it. You do want to keep asking yourself that through the process. But if you're thinking, no, you know, our relationship is really damaged, and it can't necessarily go forward, or they're harming themselves, or someone else, it's just really, I really need to keep going here. I feel like that's what the Lord would have me do. So here's some general principles on how to do that, okay? When you've gone to them, you've tried, and now it's time to involve another party. So these are in chapter nine, starts kind of where I'm starting here is on page 186. And I'm just going to highlight, highlight what I think are the most important principles here. And the first one that he talks about is keeping the conflict as small as possible, as long as possible, and keeping the circle of people that know about it as small as possible. In other words, we don't want to be airing our dirty laundry, so to speak, to other people that are not involved in the conflict. Right? And if we have been doing that, whether it's just been to, you know, under the guise of, oh, I have to vent, or, you know, maybe it's more nefarious, like we're trying to get them on our side because we want reaffirmation or whatever it is. Well, that's going to be something that we're going to have to actually address with this person because we sinned against them in doing that. I'll talk about maybe where that would go in a moment, but we do want to keep the circle as small as possible, and also having someone to bring alongside. And again, we're talking mostly about conflicts between Christians here, although you can take these principles and apply them in some non-Christian relationships as well, and he gives some suggestions for that. But that's one of the blessings of church membership, is that there's mutual accountability. that we have come together and we've agreed to all be a part of this church and this body, and we've basically voluntarily joined this Christian church family. And so as brothers and sisters in Christ, having another person that we can come talk to someone with, that's a blessing. And this, what he's talking about here, this whole process, Matthew 18, you can't really finish it unless someone is a member of a Bible-believing Christian church. Because if someone just voluntarily shows up and says, I'm a Christian because I go to church, I love the Lord Jesus, but I don't want to be a member of his bride, that doesn't really work. And it especially doesn't work for accountability. So this is one of the blessings of church membership, is that if we're involved in a conflict and we can't get to the bottom of it, We have help. We have church family to help us. So this will work generally in other contexts, but really, it kind of assumes church membership, which is a blessing. Eventually, you could end an excommunication if it's a serious enough offense, right? Well, if there's no church membership, there's no excommunication. If you haven't put yourself under the authority of a local church, well then, it's like, well, I'll listen to you as long as I like it and it benefits me, but other than that, I have no responsibility to do so. So here are the five steps. These start on page 187. And again, he starts with, think again, all right, before you make the circle bigger and talk to someone else, is this something that you can overlook? And it might even be, well, they're definitely treating me poorly, and I'm entitled to this, whether it's a financial thing or whatever. Well, you know, sometimes the Lord calls us to give up our rights, and to give up the things that we deserve, and that are rightfully ours. Sometimes we're called to give those things up, for God's glory, because that's what Jesus Christ did for us. So sometimes, you know, it might be, well, I'm entitled to this, and this is right. Sometimes you might need to just let that go. So do we need to do that? We need to bring it back to our own heart, right? And what I would say is, look, if this is just affecting mostly just me, I'm gonna try to find a way to do that, right? If it's negatively affecting, like, Christ's reputation, or, you know, this person, I'm afraid that if they go down this road, they're going to fall further into sin, and fall away from the Lord, and those kinds of things, well then, you know, it's probably not something to overlook. But look, if it mainly just affects me and what I'm entitled to, or I just have to eat humble pie, or I just have to deal with it, That might be something you should overlook. So that's the first step, is again, consider that. Step two is talk in private. He says, if you wrong someone else, God calls you to go to the other person to seek forgiveness. And that's what we've been talking about, okay? Is not to shortchange that and gather a witness already, or I'm afraid to talk to them or whatnot. We did talk about, look, if there's an abuse situation, or if there's a difference in power, that might be uniting to bring somebody in sooner. But if it's not in those kinds of situations, it's just uncomfortable and I'm scared, well, pray for some courage. You need to go talk to them in private. And then, essentially, if that doesn't work out and you've tried everything, you can try on your own, that's when the take one or two others along comes in. And this doesn't work well if you just spring it on them. Well, you wouldn't listen to me, so I brought Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or hopefully somebody better than that, right? But look, if it appears you're not agreeing, you've got to ask them, OK, it appears that we are not agreeing on this. Would you be? before you bring somebody in, would you be open to, you know, taking this before a third party, like someone that could maybe help us communicate with each other and sort things out and maybe act as an intermediary, right? So before you just do it, you know, warn the other party and not just warn, but even ask them like, hey, we're not making any progress. Do you think it would be helpful if We brought in Elder Nate. We used Elder Nate for everything, so then everything that needs to be brought in is Elder Nate. He's already agreed to stand for another term. That's irrevocable. It's in the session minutes. I realize you're a clerk, but we'll notice. So you warn before you make the circle larger. And you might be involved in some conflicts right now, and you realize, I didn't do that. I already made the circle larger. Or you'll be in one, and you'll go, ooh, I really should have ran that by them first. Well, then you're just going to add that to the other thing, right? You're going to say, hey, I really think we need some help with this, and we should bring in a third party. And now there's something else. I know I had some things I thought that maybe I did wrong, and I asked you to forgive me for. I was really upset, and I'm sorry I shouldn't have done this. And I already told so-and-so, and they know about it. you know, please forgive me for that, right? Which again, they might get mad, but they're also establishing, like, look, I just want our problem to be solved. I'm not concerned about winning this conflict. I just want us to, you know, be in right relationship again. And that means I have to eat, you know, helping of helping after helping of humble pie. you know, it's worth it, right? So it's communicating these things, so if you've done that ahead of time, admit that, ask for forgiveness, and then think carefully about who would make a good third party, okay? Probably not your best friend that sees everything the same way that you see them, and that you may, you know, whether you were venting or trying to get help or advice or whatever, You've kind of already colored their opinion of this other person in the situation. That may not be the best person to invite in to help you. You want it to be someone that is not just your yes man or yes woman or the one that helps you get riled up about whatever wrong it was that was done to you. That's probably not a good third party. You want someone that's familiar, if possible, with both both people, you and the other person. If it involves something complicated, like something financial, you'd want them to have some financial chops and whatnot. But you want somebody that's going to be respected by both parties, that you believe will be partial, that the other person believes will be partial, and that's fairly knowledgeable about the topic. I thought this was pretty interesting, and Ken Sandy suggested that you do not give details to the third party before the meeting, basically. Like, we kind of think of this sometimes like, this person's sinning, they're not listening to me, now I need to go get someone else that agrees that they're sinning, and then go talk to them. Now look, that could be the case sometimes, especially if it's an absolutely terrible, obvious sin, right? But if it's a conflict, and there's fault on both sides, Ken Sandy says that you're not trying to get them on your side and then go talk to the person and gang up on them, so to speak. You need to continue to be open to the possibility, maybe probability, that you're part of the problem. and that you've actually done some things to contribute to this conflict. And one of the ways to do that is to approach someone and say, hey, so-and-so and I, we're not getting along. here's the topic without giving them the entire history and getting them on your side. We both agree, we both appreciate you and value your judgment. Would you be willing to sit down and talk with us and help us work this out? That's really what we're talking about here when it is with respect to conflict resolution. And so that person comes and their roles, would be to come, not knowing everything up front, okay, at least from one side. I mean, maybe they do some, you know, if I was doing it, I might talk to one person, you know, privately, and then I might talk to the other person privately, so I at least kind of know where things are at, like if I was mediating. But then you go, and their job is, you know, to help move things forward. If one party is having trouble clarifying the issue, they're having trouble communicating or communicating in ways that, you know, use I statements and whatnot, like the third party is there to help do that rephrasing. Well, here's what I heard you say. You said this, the way that I'm hearing that is, I'm hearing it this way. Is that what you mean? And they say, yes, or they say, no, that's not what I meant. Okay, could you tell us a little bit more about what you mean here? And so really what the third party is doing is those listening skills and speaking skills that we just went over. They're actually using those, and they're not as emotionally invested in the situation. They just want to see reconciliation. So they're trying to just help it along by facilitating those things. So that's really, in a conversation slash confrontation, that's really what a third party is doing when there's a conflict there. Now, it looks a little different. It looks a little different if, say, one person is stealing from their employer and you found out about it and you have evidence. Okay, well the third party is not going to be quite as much as facilitating and whatnot. It'll be a little bit more. Is that true? Tell me about, you know, and then they become a witness, right? So that third party can also become a witness that if the procedure, if it goes on further and longer, right? So, depending on the circumstances, especially if this has to do with anything in business, but you could do with personal relationships as well. If you're in conflict with someone, you both agree that you need a third party to come in and to help you guys, and you know the goal isn't to win, but the goal is reconciliation, you might say, hey, I trust this person, you trust this person, yeah, I think they are wise, What if we both agree that at the end of this, whatever kind of route they suggest, and a good third party will suggest two or three if they can, right? We're gonna pick one of those. Or if they suggest one route forward, even if you don't like it and I don't like it, but it'll help us just move past this, we're gonna go with what they say. You might do that too. It just really depends on what the conflict is about. But you might do that as well. You might decide ahead of time to agree with the solution proposed by the arbitrator, even if that means... Because you're not there to get what's fair. You're not there to get what's yours. You're not there to make sure that they understand just how much they hurt your feelings or whatever. That's not why you're there. You're there because You want peace, you want reconciliation, right? And when two parties really don't agree with each other, really aren't seeing eye to eye, at times that requires both parties to not get exactly what they want, and just to basically say, you know what, the evidence of us going through this together and really trying hard and everything else, I know you love the Lord, I know we love the Lord, we're not gonna quite agree on this, We're, you know, we're going to decide to move on. Like that might happen. It might not get completely resolved to your satisfaction. But your goal is not to get it resolved completely to your satisfaction. Your goal is restoration of relationship. Let's see. And then I have finally on here, and this is in step three, if either you or the other person refuses to resolve material issues or to be reconciled, the reconcilers may serve as witnesses to report, irrespective to your churches, what they have observed during the reconciliation efforts. So if it does escalate to step four, which is tell it to the church, that person, that third party, you know, They can serve as a witness. This is what this person said. This is what they heard. That witness is going to be valid. So if that doesn't work, you've met, you've tried, that's when you get to, okay, go and tell it to the church. And again, I'm just gonna paint broad pictures here also because we started later, but this step, tell it to the church, accountability essentially assumes church membership in some form. If there's, and you don't have to be members of the same church, right? If you're both members of like-minded churches, this can completely work. It's a little harder, but it still works. So if the conflict is not resolved, and it's too serious to overlook, now it's probably time to involve at least one of the elders and to kind of let them know what's going on, right? And so this is what that looks like in an OPC church. This kind of, I'm departing from the book a little bit, but he does a really good job explaining the principles. But we have Book of Church Order, And in here, there are three books. The book of discipline has instructions on how to do these things. And you can order one of these if you want online, they're $10 on the OPC website, or it's online for free. And so it takes the biblical principles, it takes Matthew 15, and it starts to just really work it out. And so what does this look like? Okay, when you go to the elders, so-and-so has wronged me, and they wouldn't listen to me, I brought in a third party, they won't listen to either of us, and whatnot, and I need help. Well, probably what's going to happen is the first thing we're going to say is, all right, well, tell us about it, and did you follow those steps? Right? Tell us how you sought up to this point to follow Matthew 18 or Matthew 5, which is, you know, leave your gift at the altar if someone has something against you and go and reconcile, right? Galatians 6, bearing one another's burdens, overlooking. You try to overlook it. Oh, you don't think you can overlook it? Why don't you think? Did you try to go to them? Did you do these things? And if you say, well, no, but I know that they did it, we're gonna say, okay. We'll help you, we'll give you some advice, but you're going to need to go through the process here. We're going to try to redirect you to help you do that. Again, this is different if there's an abuse situation, power structures, but if it's not those things, you're going to try to refer someone back to Matthew 18 and try to help you do that. Let's say that you've done all that, you've done your very best, and you still need help. Well, the elders will probably try to help reconcile the parties, meet with the parties, try their own Matthew 18 there. And if that just isn't working, and there's still no reconciliation, okay, charges can be brought by the offended party, or charges can be brought by the session. And the Book of Discipline has instructions on how to do that. This is a part of the process of potentially eventually telling the whole church. So, if that happens, the session, according to the book, they have things to work through. Well, is this a public sin or is this a private sin? Well, if this is a private sin and only a few people know about it, then this is still going to stay neo-confidential and whatnot. If it's a public sin that's harming the peace and purity of the church and lots of people know about it, well then eventually there are going to be some things that probably need to be made known. The session will also, according to the book, if there are charges brought by someone, one of the things they have to, and they have to be in a certain form, there have to be evidences and sorts of things, okay? They'll say, okay, are these charges in order? Let's say they're not in order. Okay, let us help you get them. All right, now they're in order, okay? Is this serious enough that if this person doesn't repent, is it serious enough that it constitutes a trial? Like, is this something major that's really harmful to the church, or to these individuals, or to their relationship? If the session feels that, look, this is certainly hurtful, and it's certainly hard, but it doesn't constitute, it's not serious enough for a trial, right? Well, if they have all the evidence, and they know, they can certainly give an admonishment, Talk to the person, an official admonishment, and say, hey, we're really concerned about... An admonishment sounds like this. Well, so-and-so has brought this to us, they've tried, you agree they've tried, yes, okay. Well, we see that this is dangerous for you to continue in this behavior. We think that this is really also not the best witness to your non-Christian family. It really would exhort you to come to church regularly on Sundays. you know, whatever it is, like a more minor, like character flaw sort of thing, that would be an admonishment. Like, hey, this is wrong, and you really need to change your behavior here. You know, and if they're a believer that wants to grow, they'll probably say, they'll probably see it and say, yes, and pray for them, and it'll be helpful. Also, without a trial, there could be the next level is a rebuke. And that's a little more serious. That's like, hey, you know, like somebody that's engaging in really unloving behavior and it's harming their relationship, you know, whatever it might be. That's a little more serious. And the more serious is, hey, wow, this is your behavior. Here's what the Bible says. Do you see that those things do not go together? Well, yeah, but, okay, you're telling us why you're breaking God's law. Like, here's what you're doing, here's what the Bible says, you need to stop. And if you don't stop, you could be harming yourself, you could be damaging your marriage, you could be damaging, like, whatever it is, okay? So a rebuke's a little more serious. And if someone doesn't respond to a rebuke, it could escalate from there, okay? So that's kind of how it goes, and then if it's really serious, you know, someone just never coming to church, or adultery, or physical abuse, it could be any number of things, just someone that is causing dissension in the body of Christ, and they've been warned and asked not to do that, and they just keep at it, then the session can proceed with a trial, and they have, you know, A trial, they can, if they're found guilty, they can be admonished, they can be rebuked, although they could have been admonished or rebuked. At least this pastor would not be suggesting we go to trial. I don't know about our session. Just depends on the situation and history and whatnot. Or, you know what, it's possible that you could think it's serious enough to go to trial. You go through the trial, and this is why the process is here, right? You go through the whole trial and you go, okay, they are definitely guilty, but certain things came out into the trial, I think this is more of a rebuke now. That could happen, right? But if it's serious, they go through trial, they're found guilty, they could be admonished, rebuked, suspended. If they're a church officer, they could be deposed. That means they're not a church officer anymore. They're probably suspended. Excommunicated. If at some point along the process they ask to be erased. There's two places in the book where you can be erased. One is the place in the book where it's like you're being erased and this has nothing to do with church discipline. Like this is administrative. It's called administrative discipline. like you're erased because we couldn't find you or you insisted on going to church somewhere else or it's like just administrative kind of stuff well there's also an erasure in the discipline section and if someone asks to be erased we don't have to erase them but if we do and it's in the discipline section it's more like a light excommunication so sometimes erasure can also be administrative sometimes it can be more discipline-minded and then we know that Ultimately, someone's not repentant, it's serious, maybe they're suspended, they just don't come around and repent. Eventually, that could potentially lead to excommunication. So, before I talk just a few minutes about excommunication, I'm gonna stop there for a second. So my goal has been, so far, our takeaways today. I guess number one would be to help you understand the role of a third party and when to involve one. When is it appropriate to do that? What kind of things might that third party do? If you're asked to be a third party, what might you try to do? So that's really the first goal. The second goal is to help us explain what does it mean, tell it to the church in our context as an OPC. And that's kind of just giving you a really brief overview of the book. So any questions on those two main ideas so far, about when and how to involve the third party or the general process? Does this sound like a lot of work? It is, but do you know why we voluntarily engage in this work, either as a wronged party or as someone else, third party or session trying to help? Because that's how important the peace and purity of Christ's church is to our Lord. It doesn't feel good, as we know in our personal relationships, when there's conflict and hard things there. Peace and purity is important to our Lord And so it should be important to us and important to those that he calls the shepherd. So it's a lot of work and it's really hard, but it's important work. I took a breath so I can get your question. All right, so just a few things. We do have a description of excommunication in our book, but sometimes we have unbiblical thoughts and ideas about what that means. What does it mean to excommunicate someone, to treat them as an unbeliever? And I think that Ken Sandy does a pretty nice job on helping us to understand that even that is intended to restore. And on page 193 and 194, he talks about it. He says, since only God can know a person's heart, the church has no power to decide whether the person is a believer. So we can't make a pronouncement, oh, this person is or is not a believer. We can certainly say, well, looking at their actions, they're not acting like a believer, right? Instead, the church is called to make a functional decision. If a person behaves like a non-believer would, by disregarding the authority of Scripture and of Christ's church, he should be treated as if he were a non-believer. Okay, that makes sense, doesn't it? Someone says, I'm a believer, but what they say and do, they act just like an unbeliever. Well, should we treat them then as a believer or an unbeliever? Well, we should treat them as an unbeliever that needs to see their sin and see their need for Christ, right? In other words, the church should not pretend that things are all right with people who claim to be Christians and yet refuse to listen to God as he speaks to the scriptures in the church. Treating unrepentant people as believers is sometimes the only way to help them understand the seriousness of their sin. This may be accomplished by withdrawing various membership privileges, such as communion. This would be like suspension in our book. church office, that's deposition, teaching Sunday school and may culminate in revoking their membership status if they persist in their refusal to repent of sin. That would be excommunication. Treating others as unbelievers also means that we look for every opportunity to evangelize them. We remind them again and again of the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ and urge them to receive his forgiveness by repenting of and turning from their sin. if they are behaving in a way that disrupts the peace in the church, it may be appropriate to exclude them from church property. Otherwise, we should welcome them to Sunday worship as we do other non-believers, but instead of talking to them in superficial ways, we should graciously and repeatedly remind them of the gospel and urge them to repent of their wrongs. This treatment is designed to bring conviction to stubborn people with the purpose of leading them to turn from their sinful ways and to be restored to fellowship with God and with fellow believers. So what this would mean is someone is under suspension, they've been excommunicated, but they're one of our best friends. What it would mean is, not that we stop being their friend, but when we're spending time together, we also are not just pretending that everything's okay because we're worried about their soul, right? And you say, hey, I would really, oh good, I found a way to work this in. I didn't think I would. You know, I would really love to watch the Arizona State Sun Devils destroy those U of A Wildcats and earn that trip to the Big 12 championship game next Saturday. I would love for you to come over and for us to watch that and enjoy that glorious victory together. But I can't just pretend that everything's okay, so-and-so. Have you thought more about this? Where are you at on this? Have you? And that's probably gonna make it so they don't wanna come over or whatnot. But that's what it means. If you have business relationships with them, take care of the business and then say, hey brother, I just want you to know that I'm really praying for you. Do you wanna talk about this? So it means that you just don't pretend that everything's okay. Right? And that nothing happened. And it's business as usual in your friendship. Every time you interact with them, there should be something uncomfortable there. You know? If it's a family member, and so there's family gatherings and whatnot and stuff, you should try to take them aside. How's this going? How can I pray for you? If they avoid you like the plague, because they know that you're going to do that, you can chase them down to the car and say, I want you to know I'm praying for you. Right, there should be something, something there. And then the purposes. Three purposes of treating someone as an unbeliever. First, revoking the person's membership in the church prevents the Lord from being dishonored if that person continues to act in blatantly sinful ways. So that's protecting the reputation of Christ and his church. Second, other believers are protected from being led astray by bad example or divisive behavior. That's because their behavior is so damaging that you're worried about pollution and contamination in the body of Christ. Third, treating someone as a non-believer may help the rebellious person to realize the seriousness of his or her sin, to turn from it, and to be restored to God. Sometimes people will not repent. The Lord does not humble them and bring them to their knees until they are formally excommunicated and they see what that feels like, right? And, you know, this is how the Lord dealt with Israel, how he used the rod of the nations to correct Israel, right? They would lose battles and whatnot, ultimately go into exile. Well, those are forms of church discipline. That's when I went through Amos, we were talking about that, right? The Lord is like, okay, you know, this is how you're going to behave. Here's the consequences of being out of right relationship with me. Now you're slaves, there you go. You know, it's meant to lead to repentance. Oh, you still won't go? Well, now there's gonna be something major and you're gonna be exiled. You're gonna be kicked out of the land, excommunicated from the land. Now God goes with them into exile, never leaving his people, but it's meant to humble his people and bring them to repentance. So the discipline for Israel in the New Testament is church discipline, right? And we're meant to see those parallels. And it's not like church discipline doesn't just appear out of nowhere in the New Testament. It has all its roots in the Old Testament, as God's always leading his people to repentance, sometimes with the rod. There's some other things in there. He has a good cancer analogy that you could read. He gives a plea, like, man, we need people that work on these good listening and speaking skills to be reconcilers. And he's also got a section on there, what if they're not Christians? How could we still apply some of this stuff? And it's in there. So anyway, if anyone wants to talk about it, two or five after, I'll pray and you can come talk to me after. Dear Lord, we do thank you for this time that we had, even though it was a bit brief and maybe a bit fast. Look, we're here because we want peace and we want to heal our relationships. And please help us to use these principles to do so, so that you might be praised and so that we might be blessed. In Christ's name, amen.